Rural work plan

Whether the momentum of agricultural production can be maintained, whether surplus rural labor can be turned into urban residents in an orderly manner, and whether their interests and rights can be well protected will be key to the overall success of the country's economic development and social progress.

The decisions made at the conference on rural work that concluded at the weekend point to the importance the top authorities have attached to agriculture and the role it will play in the country's overall economic growth.

The Party's central leadership decided that efforts will be made to establish a social service system for the management of agricultural work and that more financial aid will be given to family farms and rural cooperatives. At the same time, greater efforts will be made to turn surplus rural labor into urban residents in an orderly manner.

They also explicitly declared that rural villagers' rights to the land they've contracted will be firmly protected. No one is allowed to coerce rural villagers to trade their contracted land or prohibit them from doing so. By the end of October, 85 percent of rural villagers had received the certificate for their contracted land, which is supposed to protect their land rights.

In addition, more money will be invested in agricultural production to increase the incomes of those who are working in the fields.

It is absolutely right for the central authorities to make such decisions.

With the world's largest population, China must maintain robust agricultural production and it is imperative that it modernize its agricultural management and production.

With more than 200 million rural laborers working in urban areas without the same social benefits as their urban counterparts, it is also imperative for the government to solve this problem once and for all. Providing this group of people with what they are entitled to - social benefits and the same kind of living conditions - will expedite the country's urbanization and thereby propel its economic growth.

With ever-increasing production costs, the profits for agricultural production have been declining when inflation is taken into consideration. Given the importance of agricultural production, ways must be worked out to increase the income of grain producers. At the conference it was decided that rural villagers will get more subsidies for agricultural production.

Now whether these decisions will be realized depends on how good the plan to implement them is and whether local governments will put them into practice.

(China Daily 12/24/2012 page8)